The U.N. mission is urging that the longer the disease is allowed to storm West Africa, the more likely it is that the virus will reappear elsewhere in the world.
The head of the U.N. Ebola mission in West Africa has said there is a “huge risk” of the Ebola outbreak expanding beyond the hard-hit region.
GENEVA — Dec 1, 2014 - by JOHN HEILPRIN Associated Press
Liberia and Guinea have met a Dec. 1 target for isolating 70 percent of people infected with Ebola and safely burying 70 percent of those who die but Sierra Leone has not, the World Health Organization said Monday.
Only last week, the U.N. health agency said only Guinea was on track to meet the targets for getting the Ebola outbreak under control in the three hardest-hit West African countries.
But at a news conference in Geneva, WHO's Dr. Bruce Aylward said the organization had revised its conclusion based on more analysis of its data. Sierra Leone also probably met the targets in the west of the country, he said, and likely will improve to the 70 percent target nationwide "in the coming weeks."
With trials under way, scientists are working out how to give vaccines in affected regions
NATURE By Ewan Callaway Dec. 2, 2014
Safety trials of Ebola vaccines are starting to return results: at least one is known to be safe and to summon an immune response against the virus.
The challenge now is to use the results to guide the larger studies that will reveal whether the vaccines work.
“The immune responses are there,” says infectious-disease researcher Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute in Oxford, UK. “The tough call is whether they’re enough to protect humans against Ebola.”
DISCOVER MAGAZINE By Kari Lydersen Dec. 2, 2014 .....redicting the trajectory of Ebola rather than playing catching-up could do much to help prevent and contain the disease. Some experts have called for prioritizing mobile treatment units that can be quickly relocated to the spots most needed. Figuring out where Ebola is likely to strike next or finding emerging hot spots early on would be key to the placement of these treatment centers.
But such modeling requires data, and lots of it. And for stressed healthcare workers on the ground and government and non-profit agencies scrambling to combat a raging epidemic, collecting and disseminating data is often not a high priority.
BETHESDA, Maryland — Declaring the "fight is nowhere close to being over," President Barack Obama on Tuesday heralded strides in the effort to confront Ebola in West Africa and in protecting the U.S. against the spread of the deadly virus. He said squelching the disease remains an urgent priority even if the American public's attention has shifted elsewhere.
"We cannot let down our guard, even for minute," Obama said. "We can't just fight this epidemic, we have to extinguish it."
Obama spoke after touring the National Institutes of Health in Washington's Maryland suburbs where he witnessed advances in Ebola-fighting research. He highlighted the NIH's progress in developing an Ebola vaccine, calling the initial results "exciting" while cautioning that there are "no guarantees" about the vaccine's ultimate success.
NIH researchers last week reported that the first safety study of a vaccine candidate found no serious side effects, and that it triggered signs of immune protection in 20 volunteers. U.S. health officials are planning much larger studies in West Africa to try to determine if the shots really work...
DAKAR--It is next to impossible to avoid physical contact in an overcrowded prison. In Sierra Leone, heavily congested jails and a worsening Ebola outbreak make a potentially lethal combination. So how do you keep inmates safe?
Decongesting prisons in Sierra Leone to lower Ebola threat.Photo: Hannah McNeish/IRIN
Some of the safeguards against the virus are: A 21-day quarantine for fresh detainees before joining the old timers; training prison health workers and inmate leaders on Ebola prevention; and providing health and safety education and equipment.
Such measures, and others, have so far helped keep the virus out of Sierra Leone’s 17 prisons and three juvenile offenders’ homes, said Mambu Feika, head of NGO Prison Watch Sierra Leone (PWSL), which is spearheading a three-month programme to prevent Ebola transmission in prisons.
ASSOCIATED PRESS Dec. 2, 2014 By JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH and SARAH DiLORENZO
MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — The international response to Ebola is still too slow and piecemeal, Doctors Without Borders warned Tuesday, as officials said the disease is crippling the economies of the three West African countries hardest hit....
"Foreign governments have focused primarily on financing or building Ebola case management structures, leaving staffing them up to national authorities, local health care staff and NGOs (non-government organizations) which do not have the expertise required to do so," said the group, which is a primary provider of treatment in the outbreak, said in a statement Tuesday.
It reiterated its call for countries with biological-disaster response teams to deploy them.
NEW YORK TIMES By Sheri Fink and Somini Sengupta Dec. 2, 1014
GENEVA — The World Health Organization expressed doubt on Monday about achieving important United Nations benchmarks in battling Ebola, saying the year-end goals of isolating and treating all patients and safely burying all the dead would be major challenges.
WASHINGTON --President Barack Obama on Tuesday will press Congress to approve $6.18 billion in emergency funding to help fight the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and prepare U.S. hospitals to handle future cases.
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks next to Ebola response coordinator Ron Klain (L) as he hosts a meeting with his Ebola response team in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, November 18, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Larry Downing
Most of the request is aimed at the immediate response to the disease at home and abroad. But the package also includes $1.5 billion in contingency funds - money that could become a target if lawmakers decide to trim the bill.
"That is the part of the package that is most at risk," said Sam Worthington, president of InterAction, an alliance of U.S. non-governmental aid groups.
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